fredag 16 april 2010

On Climate Sensitivity 5

An albedo decrease of only 1%, bringing the Earth’s albedo from 30% to 29%, would cause an increase in the black-body radiative equilibrium temperature of about 1°C, a highly significant value, roughly equivalent to the direct radiative effect of a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration.

So IPCC alarmism claims that we live in a highly unstable surface climate in which human civilization can get destroyed by a 1% change of albedo, or doubling of CO2.

But the climate does not seem that unstable, certainly the albedo has changed 1% by human activities without any climate catastrophy.

What is wrong is not Stefan-Boltzmann's Law or differentiation per se. What is wrong is to apply it to the coupled Earth-atmosphere system, where the atmopshere acts like an insulating window connecting the Earth surface temperature of 15 C to the top of the stratosphere at 0 C, just like an ordinary window connects the inside of a room to the outside.

The connection is a combined process of convection-diffusion-radiation-evaporation-condensation, which is not at all described by Stefan Boltzmann's Radiation Law. No engineer

would model the inside temperature of a house relying only of Stefan-Boltzmann's Law.

So the entire basis of IPCC alarmism appears to rest on a fundamenatlly incorrect application

of Stefan-Boltmann's Radiation Law. If this is true, it is remarkable. And so?